My Life So Far

Moving Mayhem

On a hot summer's day in 1994 ,Tuesday the 19th of July to be exact, two people, Joost and Lillian, were made very happy at approximately seven o'clock at night. Their daughter Nicole Eveline was born in their home in Venray, a town in the south of the Netherlands. Everyone came to visit ; the new grandparents, the new uncle's , neighbors, everyone.
So much enthusiasm that they forgot that their new fridge was going to be delivered the next day. They were surprised by the delivery guy, but he understood.
Sometime in 1995 Joost's boss said that the company he was working for, was going to move to France. Everyone that worked there had 2 options: Move to France or be fired. He chose the first option, so they moved to Angus on the 11th of September 1995. They only lived there for 6 months, because they didn't really like the city and lived next to a student house and they didn't appear to be studying very much. So, they moved to Cantenay-Epinard on the 1st of March 1996. It was a small town with people that kept to themselves a lot. The French people choose family over neighbors, but luckily our neighbor's family lived 100 km away, so they considered us as their family. My parents and neighbors became friends. Nicole became friends with their kids.
1998 is when things started to happen: Nicole was old enough to go to school in France, so she went. She learned some French at school and understood her neighbors but her parents also made sure that she learned Dutch by talking Dutch to her.
On the morning of Saturday the 20th of June, Nicole didn't go to school like usual because her mother Lillian had to go to the hospital. Nicole desperately wanted to go to school, but a friend of her fathers Hans and his girlfriend took her to have breakfast at McDonald's. Well, not that she ordered a breakfast, a Happy meal, of course. Whilst she was at McDonald's her mother gave birth to her little brother: Lucas.
Her father, Joost found another job in the Netherlands, so they moved to Berg aan de Maas, a town also in the south of the Netherlands, on the 24th of November 1998. Nicole went to school there and made new friends.
But after 3 years, her father got offered a job in England with the same company. So on the 28th of November 2001 they left Berg aan de Maas and moved to Bredon, a small town an hour drive from Birmingham. Her parents tried to teach Nicole English, but she didn't want to go to England and speak a weird language. The first time she went to school there was really weird. She didn't know anyone, didn't speak the language an had to wear a school uniform. After a while things got better. She could speak English, had made new friends and even had, what you would now call, a boyfriend. When her parents told her they were moving back to the Netherlands she didn't want to leave, because she had a life there. Her parents took her to the Netherlands anyway. They moved into a rental house in Elsloo, once again in the south of the Netherlands on the 12th of November 2003. They lived there until the house that they were building would be finished. It took one and a half year before it was finished. Nicole and Lucas had already made friends in Elsloo and didn't want to leave their home once again, but they did. On the 17th of May 2005 they moved into their new house in Schinveld. Once again a new place with new people. Little did they know, that these people weren't to keen on having new people around them. Nicole and Lucas got teased on, badly. Of couse they had been teased before, but not like this. The people don't like you if you're not from Schinveld or if you're smarter than them. Unfortunately Nicole and Lucas were both. Luckily Nicole had to go to a high school in 2006. Because she was smart, all kids but one, couldn't go to the same high school as her. She chose to go to a school in Sittard, 13 km away.

Nicole is now 14 years old and still lives in Schinveld. The house they live in doesn't feel like a home, and Dutch isn't her language. When she graduates from high school she's 18 and wants to go to college in America to study medicine. She just finished writing her life story here and hope you liked reading it.